Continuing to drive momentum by focussing our attention on intention

By Board Director, Benjamin Ferry

Wow… only eight weeks until we cross over into 2025.  It really does feel like it has reached that point in the year where many of us start to get overwhelmed with finalising our to do lists (both personal and professional) and ensuring all key business orders and contracts are finalised before parts of the country start to ramp down in December.  This is all in addition to planning our festive agenda and ensuring we celebrate with our teams and key networks.  There is clearly a lot going on!  With such a jam-packed season well and truly under way it can be hard to keep the momentum we’ve built over the previous few months.  We also need to ensure all of us take time to recharge our batteries, enjoy the company of friends and family and come back ready and raring to go in 2025!

But what is at risk if we take our eyes off the prize of 2025?  All of the above may indeed be true but by the time most people are back from leave and businesses are really ramped up in the new year, we are almost at the end of January and our first quarter is potentially at risk if we need to spring in to action.  We all know that starting the year behind the eight-ball puts pressure on us straight out of the gate.  Wouldn’t it be so much nicer if we had that little bit of breathing room?

So how do we do all of the above?  It’s not a perfect world and we can’t have our cake and eat it too but surely there are a few simple steps we can all take as leaders in our businesses to ensure we keep the momentum flowing and we start off 2025 with a bang!

1.       Straight off the bat, what have we learned from 2024?  Although the year has a few weeks remaining, let’s connect with our teams and find out what achievements they are most proud of, as well as what they would have done differently.  Taking time, whether in a team meeting or one on one check-in conversations to have this discussion can be a great starting point to understand what you need to do differently in 2025.  Also… be honest with yourself.  Don’t sugar coat a missed opportunity or sweep a challenge under the rug.  Now is your chance to make a move and tackle that for the new year.

2.       From reflecting to aligning.  Once you have the treasure trove of reflections from the team, it is a great exercise to align everyone.  We can all spend our time too in the detail of our own world that we miss some of the great wins in other parts of the business or understand truly other opportunities that exist.  This can be as simple as a one hour alignment session with the full team that is part celebration and part reflection.

3.       An hour of planning can save you ten hours of doing.  Now that you have your team aligned on the wins and opportunities of 2024 you can start to formulate your plan for 2025.  Keep it simple though.  Work on up to three key priorities across three to four key buckets.  It’s hard to prioritise when there’s a laundry list of things to achieve.  This is where, as a leader you can start to introduce any key strategy shifts for the new year.  This will build on your 2024 deep dive and guide where you need to potentially pivot and reassign time in the new year.

The above steps can be accomplished in only a few hours, and it could be really easy to say that we don’t have time with everything that is going on over the next eight weeks.  But what is our intention.  Is our intention to ensure that our team are aligned with our wins and opportunities?  Is our intention to start the year with such positive momentum that our results speak for themselves?  Is our intention to have our team fully invested into our strategy and grow that advocacy across all areas of the business?  I would hazard a guess that all of us would be saying yes to these points and it is for that very reason that our attention over the next eight weeks should be focussed on this intention.  In our lives we always manage to find time for that which is important to us and maintaining our momentum should be pretty high up on that importance list.

I wish everyone an amazing end to the year, and I hope that you are able to enjoy some fruitful discussion on the year that was and the year that will be.  MEA’s attention is certainly focussed on our intention to support you all in your endeavours and make sure that 2025 is a cracker.